Charles Kelley, best known as one-third of the Grammy-winning country trio Lady A, stepped into a striking new chapter with his second solo album ‘Songs for a New Moon,' earlier this year. Long celebrated for his powerhouse vocals and emotive songwriting, Kelley used this project to explore a more intimate, soul-baring side of his artistry. The album marks his most personal work to date, shaped by a period of reflection, renewal and creative reawakening. Blending his familiar writing style with 80's sonics and nostalgic textures, ‘Songs for a New Moon' found Kelley pushing beyond the boundaries of his work with Lady A, offering a deeply human portrait of growth, gratitude and rediscovery.
In creating the album, Kelley leaned into raw storytelling and lived experience, using the songwriting process as a way to process transformation and step confidently into a new phase of his life and career. The project captured the vulnerability and strength that comes with starting over, anchored by his unmistakable voice and a sense of emotional clarity that resonates through every track. Read our review right here.
We caught up with him recently to talk all about it and lots, lots more!
Thank you for your time today, Charles, we know how busy you must be out on the road with Lady A for your Christmas shows right now!
You're welcome! Thanks for your time too. We're just about to head to Texas. We're gonna hop on the bus tonight and head that way for the next Christmas show there. Then we go to Chicago after that – it's been fun, man, you know, just stretching a different muscle with all these Christmas songs. It's a really family friendly show which is so fun.
What a busy year you've had! You released a solo album, welcomed a new baby, made a Christmas record with Dave and Hillary and now you're back out on the road! Are you a glutton for punishment? Are you getting much sleep since Archer's arrival?
(laughing) I know! You plan for all that stuff but what we didn't plan for was a new baby! (laughing) You know what? None of this is nearly as busy as it was 10 years ago. I feel like we got into such a routine of always being busy that, to me, the past five years haven't seemed like really not that bad. I'm kinda ready to gear back up again.
As a band we are all talking about how we all have pretty much had our last kids now and we feel like we are really ready to dive back in in a hard way on this next Lady A record. I think doing this solo project has fired me up even more to go into that process. It taught me that when I chase something that I'm really inspired by and not think too much about things like what the audience is going to think or try and second guess what might be ‘popular' or might work that that's when the best music can be made. I'm going to go into the next Lady A record with that same kind of mentality.
‘Songs for a New Moon' was such a good album – we loved the personal nature of the writing alongside the 80s sonics. Was there a moment during the process when you stepped back and realised just how personal the album was?
I think that's why it had to be a solo record. In the beginning I just was writing and I wrote songs like ‘Can't Lose You' and ‘Look What We Did' and the more I dug into the process the more I realised that I was writing my story. It occurred to me that I couldn't take these songs to Dave and Hillary for the band – we are such a collaborative band and we create Lady A music together but this felt like it needed to be a solo project.
Even when I played the first batch of songs for Hillary, she was like, ‘Charles, this is awesome, you need to do this!' We were taking a little time off from the band – I think it's been close to four years since our last record – and we did that intentionally. I think when you've been a band for so long you need to give the listeners a little break sometimes and we also needed to step back and live a little life too. Recording ‘Songs for a New Moon' was a way to get some of that artistic creativity out and have it sound completely different to anything I was doing with the band.
Did you approach the initial writing process the same way you did for ‘The Driver' or a Lady A album? At what point did you go “I think I want this to sound like it was recorded in 1985?'
Man, I think it just came out that way. The first song that kinda kicked off this sound was ‘Run.' Sam Ellis just got on the synth and went for it and I left that day and didn't know what we were going to do with the song! (laughing) Did we need to change the production and make it more Country? I couldn't stop listening to it, which was how it used to be with Lady A back in the day before you get………… I wouldn't call it jaded but you get used to making albums and on our first two albums, man, I would listen to them incessantly!
It had been a while since I had felt like that and had been obsessed with what I was making. I want to get back to that feeling moving forward with the band. The next song that we wrote shortly after ‘Run' was ‘Can't Lose You.' I brought ‘Run' into the room that day and asked Lindsay Rimes to check out the synth on it and he wanted to do the same thing on ‘Can't Lose You.' We had Josh Kear in with us who wrote ‘Need You Now' and it all just came together – we had so much fun being able to write songs from a slightly different perspective than we were all used to. It was cool being able to dip into different influences and our love for bands like Tears for Fears, Bryan Adams and Toto. I've always felt that my voice fits nicely into that world, you know, even on songs like ‘Just a Kiss' or ‘Need You Now' they definitely have a little bit of that 80s feel to them I think.
So when I listen to ‘Songs for a New Moon' I'm hearing Peter Cetera, Don Henley, Mr Mister, Richard Marx – What is it about the 80s that is so enduring and so evocative do you think?
Gosh. I just think the sound time-stamped the decade. Synth. Glossy guitars. Big drums. That huge production sound – which was probably the first time that people had ever heard music sound so expansive. It's funny that you mention Richard Marx because, I don't want to give it away too soon, but Richard and I are doing something together next year. He jumped up on stage one time at a Lady A show in Vegas and we kinda stayed in touch. He sent me a text after ‘Songs for a New Moon' came out and said that he thought it was one of the coolest things he had heard in a long time – so we've got something coming up together soon!
For me, that sound takes me back to when I was a little younger and falling in love with music for the first time. It's a warm, nostalgic feeling every time I hear those sounds. Peter Cetera, Michael McDonald – those influences are all in there, we threw the kitchen sink at it and it was a blast to make. We had Dan Huff come in and play guitars on it and he did such a good job.
That first 30 seconds of ‘Angel Eyes' with the drums and synth takes me back to being 14 right away and I'm presuming that that's Dan's guitar solo on that track too? – that's my favourite part of the whole record. Do you have a favourite song on there at all?
For some reason I keep coming back to ‘Can't Be Alone Tonight.' I love ballads and I love sad, hypnotic songs which I think is what that one is. It ticks all the boxes but probably my favourite, over all, would be ‘Can't Lose You.' It's the song that kicked everything off and it's got all the things for me: the energy, the sound, I love where my voice sits on that track. I pushed my voice to its breaking point on this project – as far and as high as I can sing! (laughing) I wanted to get a little bit of that Bryan Adams-break into my voice at certain times, it was a freeing experience going into the studio and just going for it!
I'm at a point now in my career where I want to take some chances with music. There's no right or wrong but I think you have to do something that, at least, turns some heads, whether people love it or hate it! I don't want to produce music that is just ‘nice,' you know? I wanted a strong reaction to this project and I think we got it. If you don't feel a little uncomfortable whilst you are making the music I'm not sure you are doing the right thing.
You mentioned it's been four years since the last Lady A album. In that time you've been writing for other artists & doing duets with other artists. ‘Tennessee Don't Mind' was my favourite song of 2023 – Kameron Marlowe did such a great job on that song. Do you have a favourite cut that was recorded by another artist?
Man, that's hard to say. The first big outside cut I ever had was ‘Do I' with Luke Bryan. That was pretty special and it was right around when ‘Need You Now' was doing its thing. That was cool, I don't think I realised at the time how cool it actually really was because at one point on the charts ‘Need You Now' was at number one and ‘Do I' was at number two! (laughing) I remember thinking, ‘Oh, welcome to the music business, this is how it is going to be from now on!' (laughing)
Brett Young doing ‘Here Tonight' is a song I love but Kameron's voice is insane on ‘Tennessee Don't Mind.' That was a song I'd written with Daniel Tashian a long time ago and I don't know who unearthed it or how it found its way to Kameron but I'm glad it did! That guy's voice is so phenomenal, he really brought that song to life because the demo was nothing more than average at best. He made it a great song.
When you hear someone sing a song like that does it make you want to go back and have another go at it?
Man, I've talked to a lot of songwriters about this. Think of how many songs that we've written that are, maybe, just 80% of the way there. What if you went back and revisited your catalogue and picked the best 10 songs you thought were close – you know, maybe they had a great verse but the chorus wasn't there, or vice-versa, you know? What if you could find some special songs that would become massive hits just sitting around doing nothing?
You never really know which songs work until the people have heard them – it's the people that let you know more than anything. Sometimes it's the most simple songs that hit the hardest – look at ‘Need You Now' – we wrote that in an hour and fifteen minutes, hour and a half tops. We thought it was nice, I thought it was melodic but there aren't many lyrics there and I thought it came out a little too easy. It went on to be our biggest song!
You've become a trusted go-to duet partner as well. I liked the song you did with Laci Kaye Booth but I really loved ‘Nothin' On' with Kelleigh Bannen. What do you look for in a duet partner because I imagine you get a lot of requests pouring in on a weekly basis?
I think, for me, they have to be somebody vocally who is special. I also think my voice has to gel with them too. It's also the song – that song, ‘Nothin' On' when Kelleigh sent it through, it was a no-brainer, it sounded like something I would cut with Lady A. I try not to do too many duets because it is kinda our thing, right, with me and Hillary, right? Trisha Yearwood reached out recently and you don't say no to Trisha Yearwood! (laughing) That song was really cool and it's fun for me to do.
Similarly to the Richard Marx thing – I have a duet coming out soon with a really great Country artist where we are re-doing one of the songs from ‘Songs for a New Moon' as a duet. I couldn't believe that she said yes so we are going to put that out next year as well.
I'm just chasing whatever feels artistically fulfilling in the moment right now. I'm trying not to over think it. It's a huge honour to be asked to do a duet with someone else, even if I have to say no for whatever reason. I think of Vince Gill – he's one of those guys I've always looked up to and he's always so gracious with his time and the way he lends his voice to projects and I want to be that guy, like him, if I can be.
Talking of gracious, Charles, you've been very gracious with your time today. We have one more question. Has the process of making ‘Songs for a New Moon' changed the way you approach writing, now, going forward? You've mentioned the word ‘risks' today, I feel like you've been empowered by the process – how will it inform what you do with the band and other writers going forward?
I just think I want to take more chances and be as personal in the writing as you can possibly be. When I look back at our catalogue with Lady A I can see where we, maybe, got a little too ambiguous or vague when we were trying to reach a wider audience: sometimes it would have been better to have been more specific. There are some newer artists that are doing that right now, look at Megan Moroney – she's so specific in her writing but that is what people are connecting with right now.
I come from a world, very similar to what happened in the 80s, where writing was a little more vague and a song did some cool things melodically whilst the lyrics just said, ‘…..and I love you,' you know? People want a little more depth that that these days. You need to be energised and enthused for the world to hear what you've written, if you don't feel that then you shouldn't be putting the song at there at all in the first place!
Thank you for your time today. I hope that you and Cassie and Ward and Archer have a great Christmas. Don't forget about us here over the pond when the Lady A machine grinds back into gear again either because it's been a while now too since we've seen you…………
Thanks man, you too. Y'all are some of our best fans – honestly, the best audiences we play to so we will be back as soon as we can.
If you haven't managed to yet – check out Charles Kelley's ‘Songs for a New Moon' album in all the usual places.
